


Don't you lift him, let him drown alive

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Beards (Facial Hair), Body Dysphoria, Body Image, Episode: c02e090 Bathhouses and Bastions, Fjord Has Issues (Critical Role), Gen, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Spa Treatments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25992043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: While Fjord had definitely grown and thrived in the Wildmothers care, had blossomed within her embrace, there were certain things that still needed some work.His hands were calloused and dry, his nails bitten to the nubs, his palms cracked like a slab of dry stone. His skin was coated in a not so thin layer of grime, blood and sweat and dirt he hadn’t managed to scrape off yet, and he smelled less than ideal after so long on the road. His feet hurt. His growing tusks ached. His skin felt too tight. He was just an unattractive mess.It wasn’t really a hard decision to come to. The bathhouse sounded promising, and he wouldn’t mind a bit of tender love and care.
Relationships: Fjord & Jester Lavorre
Comments: 2
Kudos: 57





	Don't you lift him, let him drown alive

**Author's Note:**

> This stupid fic took me so long to write!! Like, literal months. Months!! It was only supposed to be a short little drabble but I couldn't find the energy to finish it, but it's done! Finally! This fic (as are many of them) was inspired by another wonderful video by Sofia Mar that can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjANeg0r-Oo&t=2108s but SPECIFICALLY the scene (found at 2:35:20- 2:35:45) where Jester mentions Fjord getting some work done on his tusks and Fjord immediately getting worried that she wanted him to get rid of them until the assures him it's the opposite. That was just a cute scene that we need to talk about more!! Come on!! Anyway, thanks for reading!! I hope you guys enjoy this mess haha. I'm just happy to be done with it tbh.

It was safe to say that Rexxentrum wasn’t the most welcome of places that the Nein had visited. It had only been a few days since Yasha returned to them, and even shorter since their console with King Bertrand Dwendal and the wizards of his court, which included Trent Ikithon, who Fjord and the rest of the Nein took an immediate disliking to once he laid his eyes on Caleb. It had been the first time since the Victory Pit in Zadash that he had ever seen them form a wall like that so fast, and around Caleb no less.

But now they were scattered. Yasha was reading in the garden, Caduceus was practising his haunting bone-flute, the others were off doing who knew what. Rexxentrum was a large city, and they could go entire days without seeing each other until they each retired to their respective rooms at the end of the night. Fjord was left alone for the day, in the creepy inn that seemed hospitable in a fake sort of way. He didn’t trust this place, even less so than the people in it.

Alone in the room he usually shared with Caduceus, Fjord looked at himself in the mirror. It was a tall mirror, and reached from floor to ceiling, and could fit Caduceus comfortably inside it. It was probably the tallest mirror that Fjord had ever seen, and spotless too as if someone routinely went through every room and wiped these mirror’s clean every day. He suspected they probably did. It was that kind of town to do something so odd.

He looked in this mirror, and look at himself for the first time in a very long time. He had avoided mirrors for a while because he was afraid of what he might see looking back at him, but now that he had a few moments of downtime, he braved the smooth reflective surface to sneak a quick look. 

He was taller now than he had been a few months ago. Not shockingly so, not so much that it was uncomfortable to look at, but it was a noticeable difference than the Fjord who worked on the docks of Port Damali. He had filled out a little too, broad-shouldered and thick chested, rounder in the right places and muscular in the others. His chin was darkened with uneven scruff, and when he lifted a hand to scratch at it idly, it was unusual and itchy beneath his fingers.

While he had definitely grown and thrived in the Wildmothers care, had blossomed within her embrace, there were certain things that still needed some work.

His hands were calloused and dry, his nails bitten to the nubs, his palms cracked like a slab of dry stone. His skin was coated in a not so thin layer of grime, blood and sweat and dirt he hadn’t managed to scrape off yet, and he smelled less than ideal after so long on the road. His feet hurt. His growing tusks ached. His skin felt too tight. He was just an unattractive mess.

Rexxentrum was one of the most high-esteemed places in Wildemount, the most magnificent place in the Empire. They were sure to have someplace where he could freshen up a bit. A bathhouse, maybe. Molly loved his bathhouses, and during the short time that he had been with them, he had helped them explore the pleasures of such simple things, especially warm water after months of cold showers, and soap after too long on the road.

It wasn’t really a hard decision to come to. The bathhouse sounded promising, and he wouldn’t mind a bit of tender love and care.

Downstairs, some of the others sat around a table in the tavern portion of the inn. Jester had her hands gripped around a steaming mug of hot chocolate, her legs kicking under the table and her tail swinging from side to side. Caleb had his head buried in his book beside her, muttering to himself as he inscribed something on the side of the page. Frumpkin was wrapped around his shoulders purring softly. Nott spent the time idly counting buttons, her stash spread out before her on the table as she categorised them by colour and shape and size, pushing and sliding them around the wooden table with soft scraping sounds. 

They all glanced up when he approached, all turning back to their respective tasks save for Jester, who smiled so large at him that he could see her abnormally pointed incisors, and he couldn’t help smiling back. “Oh, hi Fjord,” she greeted. “What are you up to?”

“I was about to ask you all the same thing,” he said as he pulled out a chair opposite her and folded his arms on the table. “What’s that you’re drinking?”

“Hot chocolate!” she exclaimed happily as she slid it over to him so he could take a glance inside the mug at its contents. It was the palest brown that Fjord had ever known a hot chocolate to be, but before he could expect it further, Jester pulled it back towards her. “It tastes a little bland, but this is the first time that I’ve asked for hot chocolate at a tavern and they’ve actually made it for me! This place is great, guys. We can ask for whatever we want and they have to give it to us or Dwendal will be mad at them!”

Caleb made a protesting sound as he glanced up from his book to look at her through his eyebrows. “I don’t think that’s the case here, Jester. I’m hesitant to take their hospitality for granted because I know that their attitude to us can change in the flip of a coin. I wouldn’t push our luck.”

“Oh,” Jester settled back in her chair and shrugged. “But at least they gave me hot chocolate.”

“It’s a shame,” Caleb said. “Your first taste of Rexxentrum hot chocolate is this chalky _scheisse._ The hot chocolate from my home town is the best you will find in the Empire. It’s made with spices. If we ever go back there, I’ll get you some.”

Jester twisted in her seat to beam at him. “That sounds wonderful, Caleb! I would love that,” Caleb blushed and looked back down at his book. She turned to Fjord. “What about you? What are you going to do today?”

“I haven’t made up my mind quite yet,” Fjord replied. “But I’m thinking about visiting a bathhouse today. Freshen up a bit. So long on the road hasn’t been friendly to uh… anything.”

“You’re right,” Nott made a face and scrunched up her nose. “You stink.”

Fjord ignored her. “I was thinking about scouting it out today and seeing how good it is, and if it’s worth it, we’ll all go tomorrow before we leave.”

“Ugh. I fuckin’ hate baths,” Nott muttered.

Tilting her head so the jewellery on her horns jingled, Jester pushed her mug away. “I think that’s a great idea. How long are you planning on staying there today?”

“I don’t know. Four hours?” Fjord said. Everyone looked up at that, including Caleb who was busy with his book, and Nott who wouldn’t give a shit even if she had been listening. “What? Is that a bad idea?”

“Four hours?” Nott repeated.

“There’s nothing wrong with it, silly,” Jester said. “Four hours is just a long time to sit in a bath. What else are you going to do while you’re there? Are you going to bathe the whole time and that’s it?”

Shrugging, Fjord sat back against his chair. “I have to walk in and ask to see what they’ll do for me. Maybe a facial. Maybe a nice massage. Maybe I'll see if someone will trim my toenails. Maybe they’ll have something to make my beard grow- it’s been looking a little patchy.”

“ _Ja_ , it seems a bit thin,” Caleb narrowed his eyes as he looked at Fjord’s beard with intense scrutiny, and Fjord found himself subconsciously reaching up and rubbing at the faint growth on his chin. Eventually, Caleb nodded and sat back. “If you want my opinion, I think you would look quite nice with a beard. Striking.”

“Very dashing,” Jester agreed, nodding eagerly as she dug through her bright pink bag with a determination that Fjord hadn’t seen from her before, and she pulled out a small vile of thick looking liquid, stoppered with a cork, the light from the tavern making the oil inside look sickly and unwelcoming. “I almost forgot, Fjord! You just reminded me, with all this spa talk and beards. I brought this for you and never found the right time to give it to you, but this feels like the right time.”

Surprised, Fjord took it from her and turned it over in his hand as he slowly stood from his chair. “Oh, thank you, Jess. Uh, what is it?”

“Beard oil!” she said like it was obvious. She reached up and scratched at her own chin to demonstrate where to put it. “To help your beard grow!”

“Oh, how thoughtful. Thanks, Jester,” Fjord smiled as he carefully placed it in one of the pouches that hung from his side. At her questioning frown, he hurridly answered, “I’m going to put it on after the spa. Just in case whatever is in this messes with their treatments, you know? Don’t want to spend all that money for nothing, right? By the way, what’s actually in this?”

“No idea,” she said cheerfully. Almost as an afterthought, she gestured at her mouth, and her voice grew hushed yet still eager. “Maybe, while you’re at the spa, you can ask them if they have any treatments or things that they could do for your teeth. You know, for your tusks.”

All of a sudden, Fjord felt like the ground was falling out from under him, like his heart had plummeted to his toes, like his lungs were steadily filling with seawater. He thought that they were growing in well- barely poking at his upper lip when he spoke and rubbing against the inside of his lower lip when he ate, and he had done his very best to ignore it, and hadn’t picked up a file for a very long time. It was still a weird sight to behold in the mirror, almost like his face wasn’t quite his own, not yet, and he had resisted that urge knowing that the Nein was behind him and would love him and embrace him whether he had tusks or not.

He should have known that their good grace would run out sooner or later. He should have known that his luck was about to be up. Really, he should have expected it sooner. He got a very lucky few months, and he knew, deep down, that they would have to go eventually.

He just never in a million years would have thought that it would be Jester, kind, sweet, caring Jester, the one who had convinced him to grow them out in the first place, the one who had helped him embrace them and had praised him every time she saw them, who had pulled at his lips until he opened his mouth so she could take a look at his progress with gleaming eyes, would be the one to break the news to him. The one to finally, eventually, be the one to tell him, with all her honey sweetness and kind consideration, that his ugly tusks needed to go, and that she was wrong in encouraging him to grow them out, that it was bad enough that he was an orphan and a half-orc with an unbearable accent and a fake-god with an agenda hanging heavy over his head, the fact that he now had barely-visible tusks to make him look more monstrous was just too much to handle, was just a step too far.

It was as if he could feel the constricting touch of U’kotoa again, the bright yellow eye blinding him as his lungs filled with salt-water and his legs turned to jelly as he struggled to breathe. “W-What do you mean?” he managed, chocking on his own words.

He was keenly aware of everyone looking at him with searching expressions, Nott and Caleb setting there silently, but his attention was fixed squarely on Jester and her bewildered, concerned expression. “Fjord?”

“What’s uh,” he cleared his throat, trying and probably failing to look unbothered. “What about my tusks?”

“You know,” Jester pointed again to her mouth. “Maybe they have an ointment or a treatment that could make them grow a little better. Make them grow faster, or stronger or something,” she tilted her head to the side like Nugget did when he was trying to understand a command. “Is everything alright, Fjord?”

Suddenly, the air was sucked back into his lungs with a force he hadn't expected and he felt heat crawl across his face. “Oh, right,” he said. _Stupid_ , he thought, _so stupid._ “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Are you alright, Fjord?” Caleb asked, snapping him from his thoughts. “You look a little blanched. Maybe you should sit down. You look like you’re going to collapse.”

But Fjord forced a smile and shook his head, hurriedly shoving the chair under the table and swiftly moving around so he was between their table and the door. ”Nah, I’m all good. Just got a little light-headed is all. I should get going. Who knows when this place is going to close, huh? Rexxentrum time is all fucked up.”

“You’ll tell us how it is, right? If it’s worth going?” Jester called out after him, sounding hopeful.

“Of course!” Fjord shouted over his shoulder, and before he knew it, he was power walking through the streets of Rexxentrum, earning a lot of odd glances but he took no notice. The fresh air felt nice on his heated skin.

Maybe he really did just need a good old fashioned spa day. It would do him good to take a load off for a few hours and let other people take care of him for a change. He was too high-strung, too jumpy, too nervous. He licked at his tusks- he still wasn’t quite used to them yet, but he was getting there, ever so slowly.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, the title was taken from one of the songs on Fjord's second playlist, because I fuking love Delta Ray and that song was already one of my faves before Travis chose it, so I just couldn't resist.


End file.
